


Identity Crisis

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Identity Crisis (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Justice League of America (Comics)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Dubious Morality, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Identity Crisis (DCU), Murder Mystery, Past Rape/Non-con, Roleswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-07-17 22:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: When a former member of the JLA is brutally murdered, the entire super-hero community searches for the killer, fearing that themselves or their own loved ones may be the next targets! But one of them doesn't care about any long-buried secrets threatening to tear apart the League itself; she's trying to track down the person who killed her husband, and nobody, not even a supervillain or her own friends, is going to stand in her way.





	1. Coffin

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally here! Thank you to everyone who helped me out with this, also known as the people who provided me with moral support when I had to reread this awful comic over and over again in order to get everything I wanted right. This is dedicated to Brad Meltzer. I hope he knows he can't write worth a damn. 
> 
> As is typical with my writing, I'll warn at the beginning of each individual chapter, even if it's a repeat warning, so you don't have to worry about being 'ambushed' by something triggering you weren't expecting, since this _is_ a pretty triggering series. The warnings for this issue/chapter are for death/murder and the same weird pacing problems the original comic has.

Sue Dibny is extremely good at certain things. Like pretending to like Ralph’s cooking, pretending she doesn’t know Ralph has already figured out her birthday mysteries, reading a room, and keeping her head on straight while under extreme political pressure.

Right now, she has to be good at misdirection. There’s a little bit of a bounce in her step as she buys what she needs to buy-wrapping paper, a nice ribbon, some pre-creased paper because if she doesn’t get the fold right on her own the first time it’ll never happen, and lunch. It’s all a little last minute, mostly because Ollie wasn’t available until now, but… It’ll be worth it.

Ralph already knows about the smaller half of his gift, of course, even if he doesn’t think she knows that he knows. He always knows, just like she knows he’s been excited to get that magnifying glass for months. But the bigger part?

No. There’s no way he’ll guess that. No way in hell.

There’s a League communicator in her pocket, just in case she sees a supervillain while she’s downtown and needs to alert Ralph or the rest of the League. The real members of the League. Sometimes it’ll buzz and she’ll automatically check it before hearing something about Superman or Green Lantern or Lex Luthor and then tuck it away. If it’s about Wally or Ralph she’ll keep listening to it, worried that  _ this  _ will be the time they don’t come back, that  _ this  _ will be the supervillain who gets lucky, the natural disaster with just the right amount of danger behind it to be fatal. But it never is.

Sue is just sitting down to eat her lunch, which is a caprese sandwich from the place where she always goes to, when the communicator buzzes in her pocket. Sue checks it more out of sheer force of habit than anything else, pushing her anxiety about how  _this_ will be the final time she listens out of her mind. It's irrational and she knows it. She holds down on the button that lets her hear the voice on the other end, crystal clear.

_ “Sue?” _ Ralph chokes out on the other end of the line, and Sue’s heart crawls its way up into her throat and stays there. They've talked before about how she listens. He must know she's listening to him now. No, no, no, no, this wasn't supposed to be the time, there was never supposed to be a time when she heard him- _ “Sue, are you-are you there?” _

She didn’t know that that’s what they were at the time, but later on Sue will regret that her last words to her husband were “Ralph? Are you okay?” before, on the other end, his fingers slipped off the button you have to hold down before you speak into the communicator.

Sue isn’t the only one who got the message. Anyone with a Justice League communicator would’ve received it. But right then it feels like her and Ralph are the only two people in the world. It’s hard to breathe and the air feels fuzzy in her mouth and she’s not sure if she’s crying or not. Or when she started running to her car. Or when she got in the car.

Later, she doesn’t even remember how she got home. It’s like one second she was getting into her car, fumbling for her keys, and the next she’s throwing open the door to her house. Because he  _ was  _ at her house, which is why  _ she  _ couldn’t be there, which they both  _ knew,  _ which-which means she must be at the right place, which means-

Her lungs fill with smoke the second she opens the door, the shrill beeping of the alarms digging into her brain through her ears. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, it wasn’t supposed to be like this-Sue slips on something-blood? Water? She prays it’s water-and she almost cracks her head on the banister as she runs toward the huddled, pathetic lump in the middle of the dining room floor.

_ No. No. No. No. No. We were supposed to grow old together. No. No. No. No. _

He’s in the same hideous purple plaid shirt and jeans she left him in, except now they’re burnt and sooty and beyond recognition. Dimly, Sue’s aware that she’s fumbling for a pulse that she won’t find, screaming her husband’s name and trying to shake him awake.

Later, she’ll realize that Wally was first on the scene, that he arrived before she got there, boots smoking from his dash from Keystone to her house. That it’s Wally who’s pulling her away from Ralph’s body, whispering that he’s sorry, that he’s  _ so  _ sorry, that he doesn’t know what to do, that he’s just trying to help. But for now all she knows is that someone is trying to take her away from her husband, and she fights like hell not to let them do so.

And then someone else gets there, someone big and strong and blue who picks her up and hugs her, tightly, with arms that can lift a house with no effort, and she hugs back.

“I’m sorry, Sue,” Superman says, holding her a few inches above the carpet. He  _ hates  _ that he’s already thinking about accidental contamination of the evidence. That’s not supposed to be who he is. But years of working with Batman and years of reporting on people with corrupted crime scenes can rub off on someone. “I’m so, so, so sorry.”

He can’t think of much else to do but fly her out. They take the door, but he lands her on the roof and lets her hug onto him as the rest of the superheroes get there. Kyle’s bringing Batman, looking a little disappointed to be relegated to transport duty. He smooths down her hair.

“We’ll find out who did this,” he promises her. “I swear. We’ll find out who did this, and we’ll bring them to justice. I’m so sorry, Sue. I’m so, so sorry.”

She sobs louder. “We were supposed to grow old together,” she whispers. Her lips feel numb.  _ All  _ of her feels numb and cold and far away. Like some part of her is going to stay downstairs forever, holding onto her husband’s body and begging him to wake up. “We were supposed to grow old together. We were-we were going to-we were going to have a big family.”

_ Family. Oh, god, Traci… _

“I’m sorry,” Superman repeats, because there’s nothing he can say that will fix this, that will bring her husband back, and they both know it. There’s nothing he can do. Superman, the man who saves the world on practically a monthly basis, the man everyone looks up to, who she’s known for years, can’t do anything to bring her husband back home to her.

Sue lives the next week in a blur. 

The funeral is closed-casket, since the body is already being examined by Dr. Mid-Nite for any leads, and takes place in Central City. Where they met for the first time. Sue thinks Ralph would’ve liked that. Except she can’t think about him for too long without getting all shaky. So she throws herself into helping to plan the service. Taking any sort of distraction.

It’s well attended-the remaining members of the Detroit League are there, and the Europe League, and the Justice League themselves. The Titans. The Outsiders. The International League. The Justice Society. Some Lanterns who aren’t from Earth, even. And others. Civilians who remember her husband saving them. Civilians who just want to gawk at the heroes.

Sue doesn’t know if she can blame them. It’s not like when they all thought Superman was dead. Then the whole world was mourning one of the greatest heroes it had ever known and would probably ever know. Sure, the world knew Ralph was the Elongated Man. Sure, he had a bit of fame in his own right. But he hadn’t had even a quarter of Superman’s fame. And Superman hadn’t been killed as Clark Kent. Ralph hadn’t been killed as the Elongated Man, he’d been killed as Ralph Dibny. As Sue’s husband.

Wally gives the speech. If Barry were alive, he’d have done it. Ralph had told her once that Barry was his first real friend. That being a superhero may have been hard, sometimes, but that didn’t mean that he would give it up. Not after everything it had given him. The fame and attention, yes, but also the friends. The  _ family.  _ Those were the things he really treasured. Fame was why he went public as a superhero. The friends he made and the family he earned were why he stayed public.

Wally’s not as close with them as Barry was before he died. But he’s their friend all the same, and he’s a good kid, and Sue hopes that Barry can see him now and be proud of him, even if Sue can’t hear a word of the speech that’s moving several audience members to tears.

And then it’s her turn to step up to the little podium. To blink the tears out of her eyes and look out over the faces of her friends. Her family. She looks around a little, scanning the rows of the audience for Traci’s familiar face, but she doesn’t find it. Maybe she just went to the bathroom. Maybe Sue just can’t see her. Maybe her eyes just skipped over her. Or maybe she isn’t even there at all. 

Sue’s silent for the first thirty seconds. Then the first minute. The speech she wrote is at Dinah and Ollie’s, where she’s been staying while the entire superhero community tries to figure out who knew how to break into her house. Her fingers clench and she swallows thickly. The sound gets picked up by the mic.

“Ralph was a hero,” she says softly. It’s quiet even with the microphone. “But before that, he was my husband. My best friend. And he meant everything to me.” She knows her voice is shaking and the faces of the heroes in the audience are blurry from the tears filling her eyes. “And I don’t know how-I don’t know how I’m-”

The dam breaks and suddenly she’s sobbing into the microphone, burying her face in her hands and sniffling loudly to try to get herself together. She’s so, so exhausted, and every part of her  _ hurts. _

“I’m sorry,” Sue says to everyone she's ever known and loved in her life. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this, I’m sorry.”

And she runs.

Sue doesn’t know her way around churches. Never really been inside one at all, before today. Neither had Ralph, not since he'd moved out of Nebraska. Maybe there are people using these little rooms where she’s trying to hide. All she knows is that she finds a little side room devoid of people where she can sit down all by herself and cry her lungs out.

Something inside of her knows who must have done this. Something inside of her knows, because who  _ else  _ could it have been? The burns-the targeting of Ralph in their  _ home- _ and who's to say that they were-that  _ he  _ was even after Ralph in the first place? Maybe the flames were meant for her. Maybe this is all her fault, for not being there instead of him.

She’s not sure how long she sits there, head in between her knees, before Zatanna sits down beside her and wraps her arm around her shoulder, gentle and comforting.

“Everyone is gone,” Zatanna says softly. “Ollie, Dinah, Ray, Carter, and me. We’re the only ones left. You know who must have done this.  _ We  _ know who must have done this. Who else could it have been?”

_ You’re right,  _ Sue wants to say, in a stronger voice than she knows she can manage.

“I’m pregnant,” she says instead, and her voice hardly even shakes at all.

The slow, steady circling of Zatanna’s thumb on Sue’s shoulder suddenly stops. “You’re serious? You’re really-”

“I found out a few weeks ago,” Sue says hollowly. “Took two tests that both came up positive and then went to my doctor. She and I were the only ones who knew. I was gonna-for his birthday-”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t come with us.” Ollie crosses his arms. Dinah, behind him, shakes her head in disagreement and rolls her eyes. “There’s a chance he could hurt you. You don’t have any superpowers or  _ real  _ training, Sue. What do you think Ralph would say if he knew-”

_ “My  _ Ralph would want me to solve this mystery for him,” Sue says coldly. “You know I have to come with you.” She stands up, Zatanna’s hand still resting on her shoulder. Her eyes are hard. All of her feels numb and far away. “He killed my husband, Ollie. I deserve this.”

“You really do,” Dinah agrees, lifting her chin. “Ollie, we can keep her safe if it comes down to a fight, but we can’t ask her to stay behind. It’s not right.”

“Damn right it’s not.” Sue squares her shoulders. “Let’s go find Doctor Light.”


	2. House of Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just like in the original comic, this is where there's a rather lengthy (albeit, in this case, less graphic) description of rape. I know it's controversial, but in the end, it's something that means a lot to me, to see a sexual assault survivor be happy and be loved in the end. So I'm keeping it. It's just going to be handled differently. And told by Sue herself. 
> 
> Unfortunately, I have to keep some details vague for this, because Meltzer never actually specifies how they're getting from one place to another in the comic.

Carter is the one who spots Wally, hiding in the corner and vibrating in place, after Ray gets the address to Light’s last known place of residence from what are almost definitely Task Force X files. 

Sue can’t help but feel a touch of pride when Wally steps out from seemingly nowhere next to a candelabra. If Barry and Iris could see him now, they’d be  _ so  _ proud. They did such a good job with him. If she does half as good of a job with hers…

“I know what you’re doing,” Wally says. His eyes flicker up toward the ceiling, but Ollie beats her to calling out Kyle’s name. The two aren’t usually far from each other. Jay sometimes jokes that all Flashes have their Lantern counterpart, even if they don’t know it yet.

Kyle materializes too, rubbing the back of his neck as he alights on the floor beside his friend. “How’d you know I was up there?”

“He bluffed,” Sue answers for Ollie, just a touch of pride in her voice that  _ she  _ wouldn’t have been bluffing if she’d said it, just as Wally storms forward and jabs Carter in the chest with one red gloved finger.

“How dare you spy on us like that?” Carter demands, his wings stretching out just slightly. Intimidation tactics that work on most people. But not Wally, who grew up in this game. He’s seen worse people try their hand at scaring him, though maybe not in worse moods.

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t lied to everyone!” Wally sounds genuinely hurt, and Sue remembers that even though he and Ralph had their differences, they  _ were  _ friends. And they’ve all had to bury too many of those. “What, you didn’t think we’d notice that everyone was assigned to a villain except the five of you? I’ve been listening since the moment you left! Whatever you did all those years ago-”

“Wally,” Sue interrupts, and he looks at her like he’s still the kid who got caught sneaking Oreos out of J’onn’s stash. She’s trying to be gentle, but she knows she looks terrible and she’s absolutely exhausted. “This isn’t about you.”

Kyle tries to mediate. He’s treating them, Sue realizes with a little bit of something that might have once been laughter, like he would treat Guy. Or another one of the other more impulsive members of the Corps. “Guys, we’re on your side. I promise. We just want to know why you think Doctor Light might’ve been the one to kill Ralph.”

“It’s just a lead,” Ollie rushes to answer. Dinah and Zatanna step a little closer to Sue when they notice her fists clench down by her sides. “Nothing more. I swear to you, it’s just a lead.”

“You sound a little too sure about it for it to be ‘just a lead’.” Wally glares. He’s not as tall as Ollie is, but right now he’s acting like he’s the biggest guy there. “Just tell us what’s going on. We’re not kids anymore.”

Ollie’s hand twitches for his bow. “You  _ are-” _

“No.” They all look at Sue, but she keeps her eyes locked with Wally’s even as her voice cracks. “He’s right, Ollie. They’re not. They deserve to know what happened. I’ll tell them on the way so we don’t waste any more time.”

For all their talk of not being children, Kyle and Wally sure look like kids waiting to be told a bedtime story as they fall in next to her. On her other side, Zatanna takes her hand and squeezes it. She’s been Sue’s friend for a long time. She knows how much telling this story can affect her. But maybe some nausea will provide a change of pace from the numbness and crying that she’s been alternating between since she found the body.

“It was back on the old satellite,” Sue starts softly, looking up at the ceiling instead of at Wally and Kyle. “I don’t know who the others were off fighting-”

“Hector Hammond,” Ray clarifies helpfully from his place on Carter’s shoulder, almost too quietly to be heard, and Sue inclines her head in his direction.

“That’s right, Hector Hammond… Everyone was gone, and it was just me on that big satellite. He-Light-must have been counting on that. I don’t… I don’t know why he came up there. Everyone’s got their theories. And they think I must too, except I just don’t know. I don’t know why he was there.” Her eyes hurt. Tears, if she still has any left. “But he didn’t find what he was looking for. He found me.” Sue takes a shaky breath. “I threatened to call the Justice League on him. And then I  _ did  _ call them when he didn’t take me seriously. He didn’t… Like that, much.”

Zatanna hums something under her breath that sounds like a Hebrew curse. Worse than the ones Ralph would say when he accidentally stubbed his toe or fell down the stairs, the ones that he picked up from his dad. And then, in English this time-“That bastard.”

“There was this flash of light, like when you get your picture taken at night but worse. I couldn’t see, and all I could think about was that I couldn’t see. I think that’s what I remember the most. How scared I was of not being able to see him coming.” Sue’s shoulders hunch in. Kyle’s already caught on, judging by the expression on his face. Wally hasn’t yet. “I fought. I remember that. I remember fighting. Hard.”

“We saw evidence of that, later. Broken chairs and things,” Dinah tells Kyle and Wally, looking straight ahead so they can’t see the tears in her eyes. She’s seen worse things than what they all saw when they found Sue. Almost everyone in the game has at one point or another. But that doesn’t make it any better. Or easier to talk about.

“I don’t even remember what I said to him. Or how I fought. Just that I was screaming and yelling and trying to punch him. I think-yeah, I did break a chair.” God, Sue wishes Ralph were here to hold her for this. “It hurt. He burnt my hands-” Wally touches one of them and makes a little sound. He’d never noticed the scars before, not consciously. “I don’t remember… Just the pain-it hurt so much more than I could’ve ever imagined. I was so afraid he was going to kill me afterward. He was holding me down on a table and all I could think about was how far away it all felt, but how it still  _ hurt.  _ And how much I hated him.”

“Barry got back first, that night,” Ray says, and Wally looks at him, twitching like he used to do whenever Barry was mentioned. Back when his death was still fresh. Kyle doesn’t move a muscle. “Naturally. So he got the first hit in. And then the rest of us were there, and we just… Attacked him. We didn’t hold back.”

“I think we could’ve killed him that night,” Ollie sighs. “And maybe…” He tugs his hat down so the shadow covers his eyes. “And maybe we should have. But Ralph got the last hit in, with Carter’s mace. If any of us was going to kill him, it would have been him. We would have let him kill him. But then he saw Sue.”

“You knew Barry better than almost anyone,” Dinah tells Wally. “So you know how fast he could move when he  _ really  _ wanted to. That’s what happened when he attacked Light. We just saw him attacking an intruder who was shouting about hurting someone. The rest of us… During the fight, we saw Sue on the floor. We knew he must’ve hurt her somehow. But Ralph hadn’t yet.”

“I wasn’t even sure who was touching me,” Sue admits. Her body feels heavy and slow. “Just that  _ someone  _ was. And once I heard his voice, I didn’t want him to stop. He kept promising me I was safe. He let me go once we got to the hospital, but he kept holding my hands and promising it was going to be okay. He was the first thing I saw once my vision came back. And he went to therapy with me, except for when I didn’t want him to.” Her voice finally breaks. “I love him.”

It’s not past tense. It never will be. Sue loves Ralph with every fiber of her being and that’s not going to change just because he’s dead. She won’t let it change.

“I-I didn’t know…” Wally shakes his head. Slow even for a normal person. Maybe he’s disbelieving, but she doesn’t think so. It’s  _ Wally.  _ Kid Wally who hated it when Ralph compared him to Barry all the time. Wally who was essentially Barry and Iris’s son. She knows him. And she knows he believes her. “I fought Light tons of times with the Titans. He was always, well… Kind of a moron.”

Sue can’t even bring herself to tune in to Ollie’s explanation. She knows it already. Found it out for herself. She doesn’t know if Ralph knew. And to be honest, she doesn’t care what other people think of it-she’s glad they did it. Light hurt her. Light tried to destroy her. It’s only fair that he be destroyed in return. Let the punishment fit the crime, and all that. They're all about justice.

Right now all she can do is look at the nondescript door in front of her. The address of the last known location of Arthur Light. So even while they’re arguing behind her, shouting about magical lobotomies and monsters and  _ “There’s no way Barry would have-!” _ and things Sue is too tired to care about, she’s walking up and knocking twice on the door.

Behind her, they all go silent. Ray coughs into his fist, though it doesn’t make much noise because of his small size. “Uh… Sue? What are you doing?”

And then the door explodes.

Kyle’s construct scoops her up and neatly carries her out of the way of the blast, a bubble forming to protect her from shrapnel before he sets her down behind them, six of them standing shoulder to shoulder in a protective line while Ray perches on Carter’s shoulder.

“Don’t look so surprised to see me,” Deathstroke says from what remains of the doorway. Light, the weasel that he is, is half hiding behind him, sneering at the heroes. “It’s the first rule of problem-solving. When the issue gets too big, you have to bring in a professional.”


	3. Serial Killer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for blood, a brief mention of debating abortion, and minor references to rape. Also, I'd like to take this time to mention that Brad Meltzer thinks Slade is so powerful because he 'uses 100% of his brain' and 'the rest of us only use 10%'. I'm sorry he never learned that that easily proven false myth was, in fact, fake, before making it a plot point in his horrible book.

“This isn’t your fight, Slade,” Dinah says warily, shifting forward ever so slightly. “Just leave Light to us.”

“Any fight is my fight if there’s enough money involved.” Deathstroke’s mask twitches. He’s smiling under there. “And he’s paying me more than enough.”

Wally acts first, jumping forward just as Ollie holds out a hand to stop him. He doesn’t stop for Ollie.

But he stops for Sue.

“Flash, no.” She shoves her way through the line, squeezing between Carter’s wings and Kyle’s shoulder. It’s a tight fit. She almost dislodges Ray from his little perch by accident. “Deathstroke-or do you prefer Slade? Hi. I’m Sue.”

“...What are you doing?” Deathstroke lowers his sword slightly like he’s hypnotized by the tiny fearless woman in front of him. All his planning and all his calculation-well, it accounts for every member of the League out there. For pretty much every _hero_ out there and then some. Not so much for five foot two widows.

“Light’s paying you to attack us, isn’t he?” Even though she’s talking to Deathstroke, Sue’s eyes are fixed on Light. She hasn’t been this close to him since it happened. She’s not sure if she wants to run and hide or go for his throat. To try to finish the job that the heroes started years ago, that night on the Watchtower. End his measly life for what he’s done. “To protect him from us.”

“Well, yes. That’s how being a mercenary works.” Deathstroke lifts his sword again, and it gleams in the sun. “My services require money.”

Sue hums to herself and sticks her hands in her pockets so he won’t see them shaking.. “And how much is he paying you? Half a million? A million?”

“Something like that.” Now Deathstroke  just looks confused. Behind Sue, the heroes exchange looks with each other. They know just as much as Deathstroke does about what she’s doing, which is to say, nothing at all. Wally gets ready to run in and grab her in case something goes horribly wrong. Barry and Iris would never forgive him if he let something happen to Sue.

“Except he hasn’t given you the money yet, has he?” Sue narrows her eyes. “Does this apartment look like it belongs to someone with money to spare? Of course, he hasn’t lived here for awhile-you just knew that Waller’s files would lead us here. But he hasn’t paid you yet. Because he’s not going to. He can’t. He's always been a lousy criminal. No money, in and out of prison... What job could possibly have paid him enough to pay _you?_ Wouldn't he have paid his own bail if he had that saved? He couldn't have known something like this would happen in the future.”

For a moment, Deathstroke stares her down. Sue lifts her chin. It's not even a bluff, not really, since she knows almost all of it is true. Nobody makes a single sound, although they can see Light looking terrified behind his would-be protector. And then he makes a little whimper, and almost too fast for Sue to process Deathstroke is turning around and grabbing Light to hurl him down the steps. He crashes at Sue’s feet and tries to stand. The sword that impales his hand to the street puts a stop to that.

“He’s all yours,” Deathstroke says. He sounds almost bored. She can barely hear the anger there. “Do whatever you want with him.”

“Wait, wait-she’s lying, she’s lying, I’ll get you the money-” Light screams, writhing on the ground and trying to rip the sword out of his hand. “I swear to god I’ll get you the money-she’s lying, she doesn’t know anything, she’s a lying bitch who-”

“Thank you, Deathstroke,” Sue says as she smiles, vicious and thin and without humor. “You’ll have a million dollars more to your name by tomorrow from me as a thank you present.”

Deathstroke nods a little lazily to Sue, glares at the heroes, and retreats back inside the house. She’s sure he’ll be gone by the time her friends, even Wally, can search it, but she doesn’t really mind. She looks over her shoulder at where her friends are standing, still in their little line, with shocked expressions on their faces.

“Well,” she says, like the man who gave her the worst day of her life isn’t spitting curses at her feet. “Are you going to help me question him or not?”

And then the bigger problem arrives.

A lot of people feel inspired when they see Superman standing in front of them. Even the criminals he stops have reported feeling surges of crazed joy, like they’re blessed to be a part of this bigger thing than themselves. Most heroes get over their starstruck phase after they’ve worked with him a few times. They realize that behind all the powers he’s just a regular, genuinely good guy. Someone they can trust.

Now, seeing Superman descend out of the sky, his arms crossed over his famous  _ S  _ and his cape flapping in the breeze, all Sue can feel is bitterness. Clark’s been a friend to her and her husband for years-not like Barry and Iris were, no, but still. A friend. She knows it’s not fair to blame him for not saving her husband from the wailing and bleeding monster in front of her. But life’s not fair.

“What’s going on here?” He says, in the exact same tone of voice he uses to talk jumpers down from the ledge. Sue realizes that this time, to him,  _ she’s _ the jumper. Well, how about that. “Why didn’t you tell us you were going after Doctor Light of all people?”

“It was my idea!” Wally shouts, and he’s beside her in a heartbeat. Sue’s heart skips a beat. She reminds herself to go put some flowers on Iris’s grave. To thank her for raising such a wonderful nephew. “Ralph had a bad run in with Light once. We thought maybe-because of the burns and everything-that he had been the one to kill him. And Sue wanted a chance to look him in the eyes as we were bringing him in.”

“And the sword sticking out of Doctor Light’s hand?” This time the question is directed at Wally, trying to catch him in a lie, but Sue is the one to answer it. She’s a better liar than he is any day of the week.

“Deathstroke was here. We had a chat and he decided that for once he was going to do us a favor.” Leisurely, she kicks Light in the mouth, and he tries to spit blood on her shoes. Her heart is pounding. She never thought she’d be this close to the man who tried to take everything from her. Never thought he’d be at her mercy. And he doesn’t even remember what he did to her.

Superman pinches the bridge of his nose. “I understand that you thought it was Doctor Light, but you couldn’t have waited just a little longer so that you could get the news that Mid-Nite figured out it  _ wasn’t?” _

Sue’s heart drops out of her chest. No. No. It had to be Light. It  _ had  _ to have been Light. Her voice sounds far away when she whispers, _ “What?” _

It takes Superman a few minutes to catch them up. To tell them that Ralph didn’t die from carbon monoxide poisoning. To tell them that he was burnt  _ after  _ his death. Probably as a way to cover up what had really happened to him.

Arthur Light didn’t kill Ralph Dibny. The murderer is still at large.

Light is taken into custody anyway. For the other crimes he’s committed. Sue sits on the doorstep of the house across from the one Deathstroke and Light were hiding in. Dinah and Kyle are talking to each other. Ollie and Wally too. It feels far away. It feels wrong. It was supposed to be Doctor Light. It was supposed to be easy.

Superman sits down beside her and hugs her like Zatanna did earlier. So gentle for a man who could kill everyone on Earth if he really wanted to. He’s always been so gentle. So kind. And so indestructible. Sue wonders if it’s easy for Lois to have faith that her husband will come home safely. She wonders how it felt for Lois when Clark died. If she lost that faith. Or if she kept believing that he was coming home. They weren’t close then and they aren’t really close now. It would be strange to actually ask her that question, wouldn’t it?

“I don’t spy on my friends,” Superman says, looking out at the police cars, the flashing light of the sirens casting colorful shadows on his bulletproof face. “But it was kind of hard for me to miss, so… Congratulations. On the baby. Did Ralph…”

“No.” Sue rests her head on his shoulder. “He didn’t. I was… I was going to surprise him. Put one of the positive tests in with his birthday gift. He knew I was getting him a magnifying glass, a really lovely one, but he didn’t know I was pregnant. That I  _ am  _ pregnant.”

That numb feeling is back. The one that comes whenever she has to talk about Ralph like he’s gone. Like he’s not going to come around the corner at any second wearing that silly purple tuxedo that Sue hated so much, like he’s not going to kiss her cheek and apologize for being so late.

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but were you two trying?” Superman squeezes her knee gently to bring her back to reality. His hand is huge. She’s not sure if it’s just because of his presence or because of how genuinely short  _ she  _ is.

“Not really. We always… We always planned on having kids one day. We always wanted to have a big family, y’know? Mostly Ralph, I guess, but-I did too. I really, really did too.” For some reason, there’s a malformed laugh building in her throat. It comes out as a wheeze instead. “We weren’t really trying. But we figured-if it happened, then… Then it would be time. And before you ask-I’m keeping it.”

She decided that in the week leading up to the funeral. Not consciously, not really, but she decided it. Even if it (he? She? Sue can’t keep thinking about it as an  _ it  _ forever, can she?) has the metagene that could potentially be activated-even if it’s  _ born  _ with powers-she can’t not keep it. Them. A human being. There’s a future human being inside her.

“Well, if you ever need a babysitter…” Clark stands up, patting the top of her head a little bit with hands that he could use to snap her neck if he really wanted to. “I can’t promise I’m free, but I’m sure Ma and Pa would be happy to do it.”

“Thanks.” Sue watches him fly off into the sunset, a perfect silhouette of a perfect hero, and stands up herself, brushing dirt off the butt of her dress. “Hey, Kyle?”

He looks over at her from where he’s talking to Carter. “Yeah?”

“Can you give me a lift home?”


	4. Who Benefits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings are for attempted murder, pregnancy, and grief.

Traci is the one who gives her the news.

Word must’ve gotten out to her that Sue’s back in her real house and isn’t staying with Dinah and Ollie anymore, because when Sue wakes up on her couch wrapped in an old blanket that Ralph said he was going to throw out months ago and never did because it was still as soft as when they bought it together at an out of the way store in Ohio, Traci is eating a veggie burger in her dining room.

Wordlessly, Sue hugs her from behind, after making sure Traci at  _ least  _ hears her coming toward her, and for a moment they just stay like that. Silent and together. “I love you,” Sue murmurs into Traci’s hair. “I love you. So much.”

“I know.” Traci turns around in her chair, voice thick and heavy. “I’m sorry I didn’t-there was a magical event. I heard it on the news when I got back. I’m sorry I wasn’t…”

“It’s okay,” Sue says. What else  _ can  _ she say? “It’s okay.” A beat, and then, because she knows she has to say it now, and Traci  _ deserves  _ to know-“I’m pregnant.”

Traci claps her hand over her mouth, dark eyes huge. She looks  _ delighted.  _ Well, someone has to be happy about it. Not-not that Sue  _ isn’t  _ happy, she wants kids, but-it’s complicated. Everything about this is complicated and awful. “Oh my god. Are you sure? Are-oh my god, you should-you should sit down, or something, I-”

“Traci,” Sue laughs-honest to god  _ laughs _ for the first time in too long, and it feels like a betrayal-as she hugs her again, “breathe. I’m not that far along. I-Superman knows, and Dinah, Ollie, Ray, Carter, and Zatanna, and maybe Wally and Kyle, but that’s all. I… I don’t think anybody else does. Unless Ollie’s told people... And I know Ollie's definitely told people. Oh, and my doctor.”

Traci quiets as she realizes what name is missing from the list. “Did… Y’know, did he…”

“No.” Sue looks away. She can’t think about that. She  _ can’t.  _ He would have been so happy to know… “He didn’t. I was going to tell him. But he didn’t know.”

Traci squeezes her hand. She sounds excited despite herself. “Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care! As long as it’s healthy.” Sue sits down on the floor and touches her stomach. It’s hard to acknowledge that there’s something actually growing inside of her. It sounds like a horror movie. Like a parasite. But it’s not. And oh, god, suddenly she’s so, so,  _ so  _ afraid. “As long as it’s healthy, I don’t care.”

Traci’s smile fades as she remembers why she came here, looking around at every shadow like it’s going to try to bite her. “Sue, we gotta get out of here.”

“What? Why?” She doesn’t want to leave. The house feels empty without Ralph. He had a way of filling a space and making it a home. And she hates how that’s gone, she hates how empty it feels, but leaving the house permanently would be like… It would be like giving up a part of herself. A part of  _ Ralph. _

“Last night, someone tried to murder Jean Loring,” Traci says seriously. “They-he, we think-failed, but-but it means that someone is going after spouses.  _ You  _ were the intended target of whoever killed Ralph. Not him. We need to get you out of here.”

Sue’s breath catches. No, no, no. (But she’d be with Ralph again.) “Are you sure it was the same attacker?”

“Jean said, afterward, to Ray, that the only thing she heard the person say before she blacked out was that they’d failed to kill, well,  _ you,  _ but they weren’t going to fail with Jean. Thank god they did, though.” Traci shudders. She reaches out to squeeze Sue’s hand. “Which means we gotta go in case they try again, alright? They probably won’t like that they failed twice-even if they did manage to-to kill…”

“Where would we-where would I go?” Sue feels a sudden rush of attachment to the house. It may have taken her a few days to be ready to set foot back inside it, even though she’d had the excuse of the investigation, but now she feels like she doesn’t want to leave. This was their house together. She can’t abandon it. Even though she knows she  _ should  _ leave if there’s a killer after her.

“You could come to the House of Mystery,” Traci offers. “But… It’s kind of crowded, nowadays, and it’s been shrinking. I think it’s trying to kick some of us out. It always liked you, though, so I don’t know. But it’s kind of cut off from the rest of the world. I don’t know if that’s what you need right now.”

“Definitely not,” Sue says decisively. “I don’t want to be locked away. I know that’s not what you’re trying to do, Traci, but I’ve got to be out here. In the real word. I’ve got to solve this.” There’s something that might be her heartbeat pounding in her ears with a ferocious intensity. “It wasn’t Light. I have to solve this, don’t you understand?”

If there’s anyone who will understand, it’ll be Traci. Ralph trained her. He  _ raised  _ her for some of her life-and god, she’s still so  _ young.  _ She still has so much time to live. So much time to grow. Suddenly, Sue wants to hold onto her and never let go.

Traci smiles a little sadly and nods. “Yeah. I-I know. I get it. I’ve got a friend-I think he’s an ex of my dad’s, actually,” she corrects herself, blushing a little when Sue grins, “who might let you stay with him. He’s really nice. He can probably take you someplace safe. But he’s kind of touchy about the people he hangs out with.”

“Thank you, Traci.” She swallows. Her emotions are all over the place and she hates it. She knows she’s just grieving. That this is… That this  _ should  _ be normal. That it is normal. But it doesn’t feel normal. “Can I give you another hug?”

Looking like she thought Sue would never ask, Traci crashes into her and squeezes tightly, burying her face into Sue’s neck. Only a teenager and already taller than she is. Sue hugs even tighter, feeling Traci’s heartbeat against her ribcage through her shaky breathing. Fast and fluttery.

“I miss him, Traci,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I miss him  _ so much.  _ It’s like I don’t feel anything and it seems normal and then something will happen, something that reminds me of him, and all of a sudden the only thing I can think about is that he’s  _ gone. _ I don’t… I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be without him. Every time he doesn’t come through the door when I’m expecting him to it’s like losing him all over again.”

“I miss him too,” Traci whispers back, and they hug for a long, long time. 


	5. Father's Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly internal dialogue, including reflection on suicidal thoughts and (like the rest of this story) murder and grief. Also, since this is my story and I can do what I want with it including mention that certain not-quite-deliberate-enough to be subtextual things are canon now.

Ralph always wanted kids. They both did. A big family, the kind neither of them came from. Ralph had his brother and his parents, and Sue had her parents and a couple of aunts and uncles, but for a Nebraska farm kid and a New York socialite, they sure didn’t have a lot of immediate family  _ or  _ relatives between them. So they wanted a big family. 

It’s a stupid, sick joke that she’s finally getting what they wanted without him. Sure, they got to train Traci together, but she was always Terry’s daughter, not theirs, as much as it felt like it sometimes. Traci… She’s such a good girl. She’s going to be a wonderful superhero one day. She’s already a great detective.

Her friend fell through, though. Apparently, he’s not currently in their dimension. Sue can’t blame him or Traci for that. But it means she’s back at Dinah and Ollie’s place. Watching Connor shoot as many targets per second he can. It’s very impressive. And it takes her mind off of things, somewhat, because of the soothing rhythm of it all.

Sue closes her eyes and listens to that. The thunks and the retrievals and all of it. Over and over and over again. Ralph used to watch Ollie train. He said it helped him keep his brain on track. Ollie asked her about it, once. Why Ralph liked to watch him without blinking, hands flicking. He thought it was especially weird because Ralph and Barry were so close, and Ollie and Barry had such a… Tense at best relationship.

Sue mimics the flicking as Connor spins around and adjusts his angle, aiming up toward the ceiling to hit the higher targets. He really is very good at this. Probably better than Ollie is, at this rate. Sue doesn’t really know anything about archery. But she can tell Connor is good. Green Arrow is the best there is, after all, and Connor is Green Arrow. Best of the best. Like Wally is.

She hasn’t had a chance to tell Barry and Iris about what happened to Ralph. Or to leave those flowers she promised them. For raising Wally so well, certainly better than his biological parents did. She wants to. But it-well, it’s stupid, really. Sue and Ralph used to visit their graves all the time. Together. They loved Barry and Iris. Not… Not even quite in the way everyone thinks they did. And of course it’s not like she  _ can’t  _ visit their graves without him, but it feels  _ wrong.  _

Everything feels wrong now that Ralph is gone. Like there’s a shifted gear inside of her head that won’t click back into place. Hell, she feels like she doesn’t even have a home anymore, now that she’s not living in it. It’s  _ stupid.  _ Home had just been wherever they were, as long as they were together. That’s how it had been for years. And now her home is gone. Her home died on their kitchen floor. She feels like she’s going to be sick.

Both times with Sonar, she thought she’d never see Ralph again. Maybe he wouldn’t know she was in trouble and wouldn’t come for her. Maybe he wouldn’t understand her message- _ real jewelry, fake feelings.  _ Maybe Sonar had already killed him and gone back on his promise. But he  _ had  _ come for her. And then again, in Opal City, when she’d thought the whole place was collapsing around her ears, she’d been so afraid… But… It had all worked out then, too.

It isn’t going to work out this time. Ralph isn’t-Ralph wasn’t like Superman. He doesn’t get to come back from the dead. He’s not big enough. He had some fame, and he loved that fame, but to put him on the level of someone like Superman or even Ollie… No. He wasn’t nearly there.

Sue hunches her shoulders in. Connor’s still going. Thunk, thunk, thunk. She kneads her thumb into her palm. She still feels like she’s going to be sick, like there’s a pressure building up inside her head. There are so many hundreds of things she wants to say, but she doesn’t know who she’s supposed to say them too. Ralph’s not here to make her feel better. He’s not here to make her want to feel alive again. He’s not here to warm her up and to tell her that it’ll all be okay, to make her stop feeling like a cold, dead, husk.

It’s not like she hasn’t thought about killing herself since she found him. It’s not more than half of what she thinks about, but it takes up a lot more space in her head than she wants it to. She should be focused on solving the mystery and getting justice, not on whether or not Ollie and Dinah’s big table is high enough off the ground for her to hang herself.

And Sue doesn’t know if she even wants to do that, anyway. She wants to have her kid, and she doesn’t want to die. She just doesn’t want to be without Ralph. Is that so bad? After Iris died-disappeared? She has a grave, and in this time, she’s dead, but… Sue’s just not sure of what the right words are-they comforted Barry when he went into self destructive spirals. They’d been horrified by some of the things he’d said, but they’d comforted him anyway, because they loved him.

Sue thinks. If someone were telling her that they were thinking about the things she is, would she be upset? Undoubtedly so. So it probably isn’t a good thing that she’s thinking about them. It’s probably a very, very bad thing. But normal, maybe, since Barry had gone through it too?

Across the room, Connor’s League communicator beeps shrilly, and Sue automatically flinches, both because of how it abruptly yanks her out of her thoughts, and because of how painfully familiar it is, because of what happened the last time she heard it.

He looks at her apologetically as he answers it, and Sue watches as his eyes go huge before his face falls and he rubs a hand down his face. “Okay. Okay.” He looks over at her, closing his eyes as he says, “Jack Drake and Captain Boomerang are both dead. It looks like they killed each other. And according to Oracle, Drake got a threatening note, like the one Lois got, which means…”

“No,” Sue says, flat and cold, because she knows what Connor is about to say. Yeah, Connor’s a good kid. A great kid, actually. He’s already a great superhero, and he’s going to outshine Ollie in the history books someday, she’s sure of it. But he’s not a detective.

“Sue, I really think you should listen-” Connor starts, moving to set his hand on her shoulder. “I know you don’t want it to be over, I-I can imagine, but I really think you should listen to Oracle and Batman on this one. Please.”

“Boomerang didn’t kill my husband.” She stands up. “I’m going to go get some air. Tell…” She hesitates. She hardly knows him, so she doesn’t know why it feels like she should say something else, something more, but… What else can she say? “Tell Tim I’m sorry.”


	6. Husbands & Wives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween. 
> 
> Warnings for brief and nongraphic mentions of physical abuse and sexual assault.

Sue knows, with a renewed vigor, that she’s going to solve this mystery. The mystery of who would kill Ralph-she can’t think of it as who would kill her husband. She can’t connect herself to it like that. She just can’t. Even though, technically, the real mystery is who would  _ try  _ to kill  _ her. _

Sue rules out Sonar right away once she’s taken that into consideration. He wouldn’t kill her, and while he absolutely would kill Ralph, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to burn the body afterward, since he’d want everyone to know how he’d done it, even if he didn’t want them to know that it was specifically  _ him  _ that did it. Besides, if it were Sonar, he’d already have taken her away. For a second, she can’t stop imagining what he would do if he found out she was having Ralph’s baby.  _ Their  _ baby, but that’s not how Sonar would think about it. She touches one of the scars on her arms and shudders.

Not Light, they’ve already ruled him out. Anyone on Task Force X can be ruled out too, since Waller keeps them on too tight of a leash and she probably never gave enough of a damn about Ralph to send someone to kill him, unless he had… Who knows, deep state secrets or something. And he wouldn’t have those because he would’ve told Sue if he had. And Sue  _ knows  _ she didn’t have any of those, and since she’d almost definitely been the intended target…

Okay. Think about it from a different angle. What would killing her do?

It would throw the superhero world into a panic, for one thing. She knows that much. Probably the villain world too, because they’d know that the superheroes would be extra vigilant. It would destroy Ralph’s life-no. Sue can’t think about what Ralph would be doing in this scenario. She just  _ can’t. _ She can’t think about him going through what she’s going through right now.

Alright. Who would want to have the superhero and supervillain worlds in an uproar? Who would be the person or people who got the most out of that? Not big time supervillains, that was for sure. Not  _ any  _ supervillain. Sue keeps pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Why would a  _ superhero  _ want her dead? Why would a superhero kill Ralph once they realized that she wasn’t home, since presumably-

Sue’s heart stops. The security system hadn’t been triggered. They’d been wondering how that had been the case, how something so thoroughly designed to stop intruders had failed at its most crucial moment. It couldn’t have been triggered if it had recognized the person coming, if Ralph had let them in… But  _ why kill him?  _ She would have said that it was an accident. That they didn’t mean to do it, and then when they did, they ran. But almost every hero, except for the ones that had been off world at the time and still hadn’t come back, had accounted for their whereabouts at the time of his death, and where they were now.

But according to first Traci, then Dinah and Ollie, someone had been targeting her. Like they’d targeted Jean. And now, apparently, were targeting  _ Lois.  _ Sue couldn’t think of a better way to be caught than to target the wife of the big man himself. Which meant that this person was confident, or bluffing. Which… Which meant that this person was a part of the superhero community, because unlike Ralph, Clark didn’t have a public identity, and he didn’t talk openly about his civilian wife like Ray had with Jean.

Someone in their community had betrayed them. But why? Why hadn’t they stopped when they realized Ralph was the only one home and waited for a day when it was just Sue? What would they get out of hurting her? Killing her? That was the big question. Who could possibly get something out of her dying? Her parents wouldn’t really get much if she died, Ralph would get the majority, and her family loved her even if they didn’t always agree with her choices.

Sue keeps pacing. It feels like she’s only one piece of evidence away from solving it. And she  _ has  _ to solve it. She owes it to Ralph to solve it. Sue isn’t technically an official detective like her husband, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know her way around a mystery. Hell, she’s out-solved the Batman  _ himself _ before, which she will absolutely never let him forget. Sue can solve this. She  _ needs  _ to solve this. For Ralph. And Jean. And Lois. For Jack and Tim. And anybody else who gets threatened.

Who, who, who,  _ who?  _ It’s driving her up Dinah and Ollie’s admittedly very nice walls. Why would somebody on their side of the community, because it  _ had  _ to have been, want her dead? Why wouldn’t they stop when they realized it was Ralph? She felt hot and tight all over and sat down heavily in the hallway as she leaned back against the wall, burying her face in her hands. This was all so, so fucked.

Breathe. Breathe. She could figure this out. She knew she could. Mysteries were like knots. You needed to find the right thread to pull to make the whole thing come undone in your hands. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing was up to you. Take it one question at a time. Back up. First things first-who would benefit from her death?

Not her family. Not Ralph. Light would have, but it wasn’t him. Which just brings up another question, because they  _ still  _ don’t know how Ralph died-no. Think about that later. One question at a time. One question at a time. Someone in the hero business-no. Narrow that down further. Someone who knows Superman’s identity enough to threaten Lois. Good. Well, not good for Lois, but it’s as good a starting place as any.

Sue recruits Dinah to help her make a list of everyone with Superman’s identity, with the people who wouldn’t threaten Lois, whether because they know them too well, are too bad at lying, or some other nebulous reason, crossed out in red marker. Lois and Superman themselves get crossed off first, then Sue and Ralph (“We have to be thorough,” Sue insists), then Wally, then Dinah and Ollie, then Bruce, and on, and on, and on, until… Basically every name they have is crossed out, and the only reason the last ones haven’t been is because they’ve stopped to eat lunch.

“I don’t get it. Why would a villain want superhero uproar, and why would a superhero want the same thing? It doesn’t make any sense.” Dinah licks some tomato sauce off her fingers. It almost looks like blood. “It has to be someone from this list, doesn’t it?”

“It has to be. But none of them seem like likely suspects.” Sue clicks her pen over and over and over again. Ralph used to get into this space, where all he would do was focus on the case until it was solved, latching onto it until there was an answer. A part of that was definitely just due to his ADHD, but he also just loved mysteries. And he’d made Sue love them too. “Why? That’s the big question, isn’t it?  _ Why?” _

For a moment, Dinah doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t say what Sue knows she wants to say. Things like  _ this won’t bring Ralph back.  _ Things like  _ you can’t distract yourself from what happened by solving this forever.  _ Things like  _ Sue, he’s gone, and nothing you do is going to change that.  _ Things like  _ I’m sorry for what you’re going through and what you’re forcing yourself through.  _ Things like  _ I don’t think stress is very good for the baby. _ Instead, Dinah says, softly, “I’m not a detective, but I’ve seen a lot of shit in my day, and I might have a theory.”

Sue looks at her, forcing herself to stop clicking the pen. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Distantly, she’s trembling. Distantly, she’s sitting at a table with Dinah, her friend of many years. Distantly, she’s still trying to shake her mutilated husband awake. She can’t get too excited. She has to stay calm. It’s a theory. But it’s going to be the only one they have. “What’s the theory?”

“Well,” Dinah says slowly, swallowing another bite of her sandwich and wiping at her mouth with one of her knuckles, and Sue gets ready to defend her knowledge that it  _ wasn’t  _ Boomerang who killed her husband for the seventh time, only to be surprised when Dinah continues with, “I guess my theory is… It was someone else like you. And me, too.”

“What?” Sue blinks at her, setting what remains of her lunch down on its checkerboard wax paper wrapping. She tries to resist the impulse to count how many black squares there are. (God, she wishes Ralph were here to help her.)

“Married to a superhero. I know when I get in trouble, Ollie gets really overprotective for a few days even though he know I can take care of myself, and I remember after Light…” Dinah shakes her head. “It doesn’t make that much sense, because how could an untrained fighter like that kill anybody? No offense, Sue, but you guys aren’t exactly masters of hand-to-hand combat. But there are some superhero life partners that used to be villains. Hell, Batman is out on a rooftop in Gotham with Catwoman practically every night, and she’s  _ still  _ a villain. Not that I think she did it.” Dinah shrugs. “Hey, it’s a theory.”

Something in Sue’s head clicks. Dinah’s theory is… It’s  _ good.  _ But it’s not just that. Suddenly, she’s going through the laundry list of the spouses of superheroes, or of former superheroes, figuring out which ones could get into her apartment and kill Ralph with hardly a trace-but they  _ must  _ have left a trace, because you only burn a body to hide something. Who has the powers. Who has the tech. Who has the closeness, that kind of familiarity, that they knew none of them would ever suspect they’d ever want to hurt  _ innocent little Sue Dibny… _

With a surety she hasn’t had in what feels like forever, Sue taps one of the names that they’ve already crossed out in bright bloody red.

“I know who killed my husband.”


	7. The Hero's Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more to go after this. Again, I must warn for brief and nongraphic mentions of sexual assault.

Doctor Mid-Nite finds a microscopic set of footprints on Ralph’s brain, and it’s over from there.

Sue thought it would take more persuasion to convince them that it was Jean, not Ray, who killed him, but once they’ve taken her into custody, she confesses practically immediately. Shouting that it was an accident, she was just trying to get Ray back, she was just trying to fix her life, it’s not her fault Ralph picked up the phone. She’s probably going to go to Arkham Asylum, not a  _ real  _ prison, but she’s not a hardened criminal-she won’t be getting out of that revolving door any time soon.

Once upon a time, Sue likes to think she would feel bad for Jean. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel anything, really. Just numbness. Sometimes there’s a flash of cold, bitter anger, the kind that makes you scream your lungs out into your pillow, the pillow in  _ your  _ bed since you can finally move back in, even though the house feels so  _ fucking  _ empty, like it belongs to a stranger, like you’ve stolen it, like-

Dinah and Ollie come over. Zatanna. Traci. Carter. Not Ray. Nobody’s heard from Ray in awhile. They know he’s around, he’s been spotted a few times at six inches up, but he’s clearly avoiding them since he turned Jean in. They don’t blame him. Sue wonders if he thought it could’ve been him. If after Jean got bored and realized all the reasons their marriage had had problems in the first place, all the reasons why she was an _ex_ and not his current wife, she would kill him, too. Sue doesn’t know how to imagine that happening to her. She doesn't feel bad for Jean, but she does feel bad for Ray. At least a little bit.

“I miss Barry,” Sue whispers, staring up at her ceiling. Ollie pats her hand a little awkwardly and she wriggles her fingers into his so she can squeeze properly. “He wouldn’t know exactly what to say right now, but he’d try to say  _ something  _ comforting, and even if it fell flat on its face, it would still be nice. And he’d know what to do. Fuck! Shit, I should probably stop swearing if I’m going to have a baby. Dammit, once you know you should stop swearing it’s  _ really fucking hard!” _

Ollie rubs her back and passes her the tissue box when she starts crying again, because of  _ course  _ when it’s all over all the emotions are going to start boiling over even if she still can’t properly feel them. She’s just crying with nothing behind it. Numb broken sobbing in her bed. Her bed which is too fucking big for just one person, which is why Ollie is nicely sitting on her other side.

“I think you should talk to him,” Ollie says quietly. Sue doesn’t roll over and look at him. She kind of wants to try suffocating herself in her pillow, but it’s her favorite pillow, and she doesn’t want to ruin it by dying in it. On it? Whatever. “I think it’ll make you feel better.”

Sue sniffles loudly. There’s a headache building behind her eyes, the kind you get when you cry too hard for too long. Pressure behind her skin that needs to get out somehow. She hates this. All of this. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Ollie rubs her shoulder, just the way he knows she likes it. Firm and grounding. Ralph used to wrap his arms around her and  _ squeeze  _ just enough to keep her calm, on the (admittedly more common than people thought) occasion when things got too stressful. “Just try it, okay? That’s the best advice I can give.”

She watches him leave. He’s got a patrol to get to. 

Life goes on. For everyone else.

Sue knows this isn’t something she’s just going to get over, and that it’s not  _ supposed  _ to be something she’s just going to get over, but it feels like everyone wants her to. It feels like everyone else has already started to go back to normal. Wally and Kyle invited her over to dinner, because they're fantastic kids. Carter is going on a quest, or something. Martian Manhunter is investigating a black hole, apparently. Ollie and Dinah have their patrols. Zatanna has an actual day job she needs to do, even if her magic shows leave her schedule pretty flexible and with enough time to actually be a superhero in the first place.

It’s not that she wants them to put their lives on hold for her. For Ralph. Does she? Maybe a little bit. They loved him too. Not like she did, but they  _ did  _ care about him. But there’s not a piece of them that’s still holding him on the floor, a piece of them still scrambling to figure out a mystery that’s already been solved, a puzzle with all the pieces already assembled.

At least she’s not dead yet. Jean wanted her hurt, maybe dead. Light wanted to kill her, and he almost succeeded, twisting her up inside and smashing her up like a glass vase that she had to glue back together herself, filling in the edges with gold. Sonar wanted her to be his queen, wanted her to be his forever, the kind of possession that makes you look over your shoulder at night. And she’s still here, isn’t she? Still alive and still kicking and screaming and crying a frankly hideous amount. She didn’t know a human being could make this many tears. Barry, after Iris, mostly just had shaking fits-no. Get back on track. Not dead yet. Not dead yet. Not dead yet. Not  _ going  _ to be dead. 

Screw them. Screw them all. She’s Sue Dibny, the remaining half of a world-famous detective duo. She can live for a few more hours. And then a few more after that, too, and so on. She can do this. She just has to keep breathing. And maybe she’ll take Ollie’s advice about talking to him, after all. Maybe it’ll help. Maybe he  _ is  _ listening, from somewhere. Ghosts exist, don’t they? And there’s the Spectre… That’s basically like a god, right?

Sue can pretend someone is listening. Maybe she won’t even have to do the pretending part, in the end. She’d like that a lot, she’s pretty sure. She’s ‘pretty sure’ about a lot of things lately. Never quite certain. Like she’s still afraid she’s going to die, that Jean will kill her, even though she’s not sure she’d mind it if she did. It’s stupid. Just like how what she’s about to do is stupid.

“I’ve been thinking about Doctor Light,” Sue says, a little hoarsely, to the empty air. “Not Kimmi. You know. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about how I felt afterward. At the hospital, when I still couldn’t see. How that one nurse kept getting frustrated with me because I wouldn’t let go of you, and I wouldn’t let any of  _ them  _ touch me, and-hell, I wouldn’t even let  _ you  _ do it. I could touch you, but you couldn’t touch me. That… That was the second worst day of my life, I think. I didn't think it could get any worse than that, and it didn't even after Bito-I mean Sonar-because it was just too _horrible,_  when that happened.I thought it couldn't get worse. And then it  _did."_

There’s no response, and Sue’s weirdly high hopes of receiving one are crushed. She clears her throat a little and keeps going, because now there’s nobody else for her to talk about all of this too. Sue talks about how she’s not sure when morning sickness is supposed to start, but it probably isn’t so early on, so the reason why she feels like she’s about to throw up all the time is probably because of grief. She talks about the last time she went to therapy, after Light, because she refused to go after Sonar. She talks about  _ that,  _ how what Light and Sonar did was awful, but different, but  _ still awful,  _ even though she knows that he already knows. 

Prospective baby names and potential plans for moving out that she knows she won’t follow through on because the thing about feeling like you’re being haunted by your husband’s ghost is that sometimes it’s the only interaction with him you’re going to have, and when you know that it kind of warps your worldview. Whatever political argument Ollie is making this time that he's fighting with Carter about. She talks about anything that comes to her mind, getting up and wandering the house aimlessly as she does so until she climbs back into bed, feeling strangely exhausted and a little silly.

Sue turns off the light on her bedside table, huddling closer to the side of the bed she knows will be empty, reaching out to set her hand down where Ralph’s shoulder would be if he were here, trying not to scream when her fingers close on empty space. Sue closes her eyes.

“Goodnight, Ralph. I love you.”


	8. Epilogue: Blackest Night Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know it's not in the spirit of the original comic to make everything good again in the epilogue. But it's also not in the spirit of the comic to respect women and give them agency, so take that. Assuming that the DC timeline follows similarly to our own (which it doesn't, but we can pretend), this takes place six years after the last chapter.
> 
> Finally, the only warnings I feel I need to issue for this chapter are for vomiting and mentions of death and grief.
> 
> Enjoy the last chapter of what could have (and should have) been.

Sue’s been waiting. There’s a countdown in her head, a ticking clock that just gets faster, and faster, and faster. It’s synonymous with her own heartbeat at this point, as constant as the blood pumping through her body.

Her shoulders shake as she squeezes her hands between her knees, taking a trembling breath. Her daughter is upstairs, probably sleeping. Or at least Sue hopes she’s sleeping. Even if she is, she’ll be woken up when he gets there. If he gets there. But she needs what sleep she can get before then, since she was awake when Barry was here earlier, but Sue had sent her away when Barry had started to cry. Sue tries to keep breathing. It won’t be long now. It won’t be long now.

The dead rose last night. People are still coming back. It won’t be long now until they finish, until everyone is done clawing their way back to life. It won’t be long now. It won’t be long now. The ticking is getting more and more frantic, and Sue fights the urge to cover her ears.

To try to push away the crushing anxiety in her chest, Sue stands up and starts to pace, knotting her fingers in her hair as she tries to take a few more deep breaths. Midnight. Barry estimated midnight. That everybody would be done by midnight, finished crawling their way back from the afterlife, hatching from the rotted corpses that they had left behind. Not like what Barry did. Both were-both  _ are,  _ in Sue’s opinion, violent acts. But Barry was spat out. He had to dig his way free, but it wasn’t from some sort of afterlife. Not  _ really.  _ Not in the end.

She keeps pacing.

There’s always the chance that he won’t come back. That he’ll stay wherever he is. Hell or heaven or purgatory. Wherever it is you end up after you die. Sue likes to think that there’s a heaven. A good afterlife for the people who deserve it. But she saw him. She saw the thing that he  _ became.  _ The monster who tried to kill Barry. Who Barry and Ray said  _ killed  _ Carter and Kendra, before they came back-some of the first to do so.

He would never do that. Not to Barry. He had loved Barry, they both had, maybe more than anybody other than Barry, Iris, and perhaps Wally ever really knew. Not if he were in his right mind. Not if he had a mind at all. But  _ again- _ Barry said that the people who came back were, from Doc Mid-Nite’s preliminary scans and tests, completely normal. Human. With human morals, and human wants, and human minds, and human hearts.

So Sue waits. And waits. And waits. And waits. As it gets steadily darker and darker outside and the clock inside her head grows steadily more and more insistent. The anxiety gets so bad she has to throw up, and that takes longer than it should. While she’s doing that, she’s anxious that something is going to happen while she’s not there, which makes the vomiting worse, which continues the cycle.

By the time she’s broken out of it and brushed her teeth and changed her clothes because why not, Sue looks like a mess. Her skin is more grey than brown, she’s pretty sure (she couldn't bear to look in the mirror), her eyes are puffy from crying, and the little makeup she  _ did  _ put on that morning in a half hearted attempt at normalcy is gone. Sue doesn’t know what she’ll do if he shows up and she throws up on him, or what she’ll do if he doesn’t show up at all, but she’s certain she doesn’t look like she wanted to when all this started anymore, now in jeans and the big Superman hoodie she bought years ago.

Sue has just convinced herself that nothing is going to happen, that unlike all the others he’s gone and he’s not coming back, there’s a very quiet, hesitant knock on the door.

Her whole body tenses, and it’s like she’s watching somebody else walk over to the door and slowly unlock it and open it. It might just be Barry, here to tell her that he couldn’t find him and then maybe cry in her arms again. She’ll invite him to stay the night and he’ll call Iris, since he’s still getting the hang of texting, and then accept the offer, and at first he’ll try to stay on the couch and then she’ll insist he at least take the guest bedroom and she’ll wake up with her daughter on one side of her and Barry asleep on the floor on her other. 

Yes. That’s how it’ll go, because it’ll be Barry who’s standing on the other side of the door.

It’s not Barry.

He looks almost exactly like he did the day he died, aside from the too-small Flash shirt that Barry or Wally probably gave him as a joke and the faded sweatpants that are also too small and the fluorescent orange sneakers. He’s hugging himself awkwardly, too long arms and too long fingers squeezing. Calming. He’s just as anxious as she is, if not more so, Sue realizes.

The clock in her head stops its counting, and they move forward at the exact same time.

They fit together just like they used to. Her face buried in his chest and his arms wrapped around her, squeezing just the way she likes it. She still has to stand on her toes and he still has to bend a bit and for a moment she just  _ breathes,  _ even if the exhale comes out as more of a sob than anything else. She wonders if he can feel her shaking, if it’s her trembling, not her tears, that’s making her vision as blurry as it is.

(Sue wonders, some, how in the world the tears are still coming. How she’s still crying. How her body hasn’t simply given up, like it did all those years ago when she came home to find him already gone.)

“I love you,” Sue chokes out. Not past tense. “I missed you.” Past tense.

“I love you, Bun,” he says just a little bit too quietly, voice just a little bit too thick, and suddenly they’re both crying on Sue’s-on  _ their  _ front porch as they sink down to their knees and fall into each other even more, illuminated by the light coming from inside the house where Sue was waiting. Her head is going to be killing her tomorrow from all this sobbing, she just knows it, but there’s not a single part of her who cares in the slightest.

“Come inside,” Sue chokes out, reluctantly pulling away but still gripping his hand like it’s a lifeline she can’t afford to let go of, and says the words she’s wanted to say for years. “Ralph, come inside and meet our daughter.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me talking about comic books and their adaptations and how much I both love and hate them at augustheart.tumblr.com.


End file.
